While direct mail marketers and producers face increasing postage costs and supply challenges, new technologies increase the effectiveness of this medium. Morgan DiGiorgio, Senior Vice President Sales & Marketing at DirectMail2.0, was on the expert panel of this live webinar as they discussed direct mail trends, opportunities, challenges and more.
She was joined by:
- Cassandra Balentine, Editor, DPS Magazine/Industrial Print
- Thomas Schnettler, Business Development, LOCR
- Adam Collinson, Director of Address Intelligence, GrayHair Software
- Kevin O’Connor, Vice President Channel Marketing & Planning, Quadient
- David Yost, General Manager, InfoSeal
Enjoy the recorded video and contact us with any questions about direct mail!
Transcript:
0:08
my name is Cassandra Balentine editor of DPS magazine welcome to today’s webinar which will focus on Direct Mail Trends
0:15
thank you to our sponsor Direct Mail 2.0 like everything else in this print industry Direct Mail continues to evolve
0:21
while challenges like postal increases are real the physical connection is uncontested with the ability to break through digital fatigue today we’ll
0:28
discuss the value of direct mail physical to digital Technologies and opportunities for personalization considerations and
0:34
how to take advantage of postal discounts we’re going to start with introductions first we have Morgan with Direct Mail
0:41
2.0 thank you Cassandra I’m excited for the
0:48
webinar today in this Stellar panel that you put together I’m Morgan DiGiorgio senior vice president sales and
0:54
marketing for Direct Mail 2.0 and at our organization our goal is to make Direct
1:00
Mail the most effective form of marketing by integrating it with Cutting Edge technology currently we have uh 13
1:07
technology marketing automation platform with real-time reporting dashboard that integrates into Direct Mail campaigns to
1:13
track show attribution and lift the response rate of meal about 23 to 46
1:19
percent for just pennies per male piece uh we’re known for having one of the
1:25
most comprehensive solutions for omnichannel enhanced mail campaigns and
1:31
uh mail providers white label or platform to add value to their clients Direct Mail campaigns while taking
1:36
advantage of a unique selling proposition our offering is something that they can provide that’s above and
1:43
beyond just putting ink on paper and uh you know you mentioned postage increases and several of our Technologies also
1:50
qualify for postage discounts so in addition to lifting response rates mailers can cut uh on postage costs as
1:57
well so we’re constantly evolving and finding new ways to improve Direct Mail
2:02
campaigns and help printers grow uh actually we are on the cusp of adding
2:08
our 14th technology to our platform so I think some of our partners are on the webinar today and there will be a very
2:15
exciting announcement coming soon from our end uh but happy to be a part of the panel today and hoping we can add some
2:22
value for our attendees with some educational information
2:27
thank you Morgan next up we have Thomas with low car
2:33
I don’t know if I said that right so you’ll have to hi Cassandra uh thank you for having me
2:39
on this panel uh I’m the guy from overseas my name is Thomas and I’m with the locker Junior services and maps in
2:47
Germany and uh we have to say good evening because it’s right about uh 8
2:52
P.M over here um Locker some of you may know us as one
2:58
of the leading providers for geo Marketing Solutions uh internationally we work with a lot of Partners print
3:05
service providers uh advertising companies from a very wide range of
3:11
Industries our main uh offering to the customers is
3:17
geolocated personalization Geo information added out of a postal
3:23
address to a mail piece this can be just some distance or assignment information
3:30
but this also can be a very very informative and highly personalized map
3:37
in a printed mail piece or in a cross media campaign lots of customers
3:43
receiving such emails Direct Mail pieces including maps are very very
3:51
enthusiastic and encouraged to see storefront locations
3:56
and all our Maps we produce are unique for the special customer
4:04
um yeah I’m happy to be part of this uh webinar and panel this evening and uh I
4:11
hope we have a good discussion and uh back to you Cassandra all right thank you Thomas
4:19
next up we have Adam with gray hair software thanks so gray hair software started as
4:25
a from focus on the tracking technology tracking all the mail through the USPS it has really expanded over the years to
4:33
utilize not only the tracking information but also than the average quality information to really leverage
4:39
it to coordinate the marketing efforts make sure everything’s going well but
4:44
especially now to coordinate additional direct milk
4:49
offerings through email and through phone make sure everything is coordinated within gray hair my current title is
4:56
director of address intelligence I actually started in this industry as a developer of the average quality
5:02
software Solutions but for the past roughly two decades my focus has been
5:09
both on the mailing and business needs associated with addresses and how to
5:14
meet those needs using the tools and data that’s made available through the USPS
5:20
so that is meant spending a lot of time deep in the weeds with mailers
5:25
businesses the USPS and the available tools and data as a result uh I was elected and
5:32
currently serve as the mtac industry Focus area leader for data technology
5:37
and addressing I I’d like to kind of describe myself as an addressing mechanic you know the
5:43
mechanic not only knows all the components and how they work together but how how do you really use those
5:49
tools to diagnose issues and to really fine-tune everything for Optimal
5:54
Performance so that’s my primary role now with gray hair and in the industry
6:01
thank you Adam and next up we have Kevin with claudiant
6:08
all right hey Cassandra and thank you so much for the opportunity to join you and uh this distinguished panel here today
6:15
uh my name is Kevin O’Connor vice president of um Channel marketing and planning in the mail related Solutions
6:21
division of Claudia um and really with our goal of trying to help you know our clients uh automate mail processes you
6:28
know bring a level of uh integrity and transparency to all things they do with
6:33
their mailing operations it even you know goes so far as to help our clients you know find ways to digitize their
6:40
mail processes and you know communicate with clients the way that clients want to be communicated with
6:46
um I’ve been in this mailing you know industry providing products and services to clients for over 25 years and you
6:52
know certainly we’ve seen a lot of Trends and Evolutions over those times um certainly I’d say two male volumes
6:59
have declined and you know how many times have all of us on the uh on the call here today been told that mail’s
7:04
going away and it’s going to evaporate and we should all find other jobs or other tasks in other Industries and I’d
7:10
say you know nothing could be further from the truth you look at the USPS mail volumes it’s still in the billions if
7:17
not tens of billions of male pieces every year uh give me a job in any industry where you have an opportunity
7:23
to make an impact on anything that starts with a B I.E billions so uh we have great opportunities here not only
7:29
now but in the future to really help clients you know optimize their mail operations for the best return you know
7:36
for their organizations I think what’s most notable nowadays in terms of Trends is how male can play such a vital role
7:42
in helping companies achieve their objectives whether it’s you know growing revenues cutting costs managing you know
7:50
compliance or uh or other types of uh you know risk mitigations uh or just
7:56
driving customer engagement and nowadays organizations of all sizes can really benefit from a lot of the Technologies
8:02
out there and I you know look forward to this conversation to help uh others you know really understand some of those
8:08
Technologies and opportunities available so thank you again for the opportunity to be here today
8:18
um David Yost with info seal thank you Cassandra for the invitation to join this panel I’m excited about it as well
8:24
I’m David Yost I’m the general manager of impulseal which is a division of Venice we’re located in Roanoke Virginia
8:29
which is in the central part of the United Eastern United States I’ve been leading production of self-mailage for
8:35
over 37 years and I’ve seen most of the major changes that have occurred over the over the last long time
8:43
um impulsive was a startup organization in 2001 today we’ve grown to be one of the largest producers of self mailers in
8:48
the in the world producing approximately 20 million pressure seal documents every single week we ship to every state
8:56
in the United States as well as internationally we ship to direct mailers there as well we’ve been working
9:02
for the last several years with the major oems to make sure our products are compatible with with their equipment
9:08
that includes continuous fed Inc jet sheet fitting chat and then the traditional laser sheet pad and roll fed
9:15
applications we also make sure our products are compatible with offset process but our Focus really has been on
9:21
the inkjet market for the last last half a dozen years what’s really set us apart from other suppliers is our creative
9:27
approach to product development customers come to us with a need and it’s often something that’s never been
9:32
designed or developed before and we look forward to embracing that concept and coming out with a new solution or a new
9:38
product that’s never been made um that that has allowed us to fit play very well into the white paper world of
9:45
the inkjet World by having a a blank document front and back that they can
9:50
use for many different applications it’s the only thing that’s printed is the glue and the perforations I really enjoy
9:56
the world of product development which is transition info seal for being just a normal self mailer producer to one of
10:01
unique constructions for all direct mailers so back to you Cassandra all right thank you David
10:08
um so thank you everybody for joining us this should be a really great panel um I do want to point out that the July
10:15
August issue of DPS has an article on Direct Mail Trends and we’ll have a um a
10:21
web series that goes with it and everybody on the panel was able to contribute to it so I will call back to
10:26
that every once in a while and that should be up on our website um probably next week so first Morgan when
10:33
we interviewed you for that article that I was just mentioned we were talking about Direct Mail marketing channels and
10:39
how they’re showing the highest return on investment compared to other channels can you take a few minutes to expand on
10:44
this has it changed in the past several years or has it always just had a higher return than other channels
10:51
sure So currently in in the recent time Suites we’ve been experiencing higher
10:58
than ever response rates to the direct mail marketing channel and the Ana who
11:04
is an industry-leading source of market research they released a report every year and it provides an analysis of
11:10
metrics across Direct Media channels like Direct Mail SMS email paid search digital media and the 2022 report showed
11:19
direct mail to have the highest Roi of all of those channels at 112 and that
11:26
was actually consistent with their year prior their their 2021 report and uh you
11:33
know for your question has this changed and has this always been the case uh the
11:38
dirt home marketing channel has had its ups and downs historically uh after the
11:44
digital marketing boom meal did suffer but you know then it slowly started inching back into play and around 2000
11:52
and 15 Direct Mail was really found to have had a major comeback and it was the
11:59
dma that reported that mail was around seven times more effective than all
12:04
digital channels uh and uh Roi was actually beating out all digital
12:10
channels except for email at the time uh now this was groundbreaking but
12:16
unfortunately usage of the channel was still trending down but it wasn’t long before people started to have more and
12:23
more of an aversion to a full email inbox I mean like today when I check my
12:29
email in the morning I’m delete delete you know I never see the marketing
12:34
message on the email that I deleted and marketers also started to realize that
12:39
uh you know they could take advantage of a next to empty mailbox to get their message on Front Street when I go out to
12:47
my mailbox and I look through my mail even if I discard that mail piece or
12:52
don’t take action I still got the impression I received the marketing
12:58
message and with the high brand recall on mail um when this message is repeated we can
13:04
improve the response rate and that speaks a lot to what we do here at
13:10
Direct Mail 2.0 um anyway from there there began to be
13:15
an insurgence of technologies that integrated into mail campaigns to make them more effective in track response
13:20
and that coupled with the onset of digital fatigue and mail was in a full
13:26
comeback now uh speaking of Technologies in uh 2017 USPS launched a heavy roll
13:35
out of their informed delivery technology they they actually had started it in 2014 with like some beta
13:41
testing groups but they they engage in the full launch in 2017
13:46
um and you know we have built an entire business around the utilization of Technologies like informed delivery and
13:53
QR codes and digital media that’s repeating messages on the mail piece and uh even some of our proprietary Tech
14:01
like lead match to improve the response to mail campaigns and show attribution and uh
14:06
mail has just continue to grow in its Effectiveness response and Roi to to
14:12
what we’re seeing today and it’s an extremely powerful tool and it really
14:18
has been remarkable to have the opportunity to educate others on its ability and provide solutions to enhance
14:24
its effectiveness thank you Morgan that was great
14:32
we’re speaking of the other other methods and delivery channels part of the job print is its ability to connect
14:37
to those virtual words Worlds by directing recipients to websites um Kevin I’m wondering if you can share
14:43
some of the top trends you’re seeing around this and what is driving them
14:48
yeah absolutely Cassandra thank you and and honestly my answer to that question is going to really leverage all the
14:54
great points that uh Morgan just brought up um you know great data points and uh you know great talking points you know
15:00
I’d say for all of us you know there’s probably no doubt that the single most important tool an organization can have
15:06
as it interacts with customers and Prospects as a website right in this day and age of our needs and wants to have
15:12
instant access to everything a website is the most effective tool to provide our targets opportunities to shop view
15:19
account information contact customer support make payments whatever it is we
15:24
want the ability to do things quickly and in our time and our busy lives right so the industry trends no matter what
15:30
the industry is to really leverage a website to create a very seamless experience for our customers or users
15:36
and a very cost effective manner for the providers right some of the people on here who are actually sending out these
15:42
mailings and managing these websites you think about today’s website technology and the artificial intelligence it
15:48
really can and does make that possible for pretty much every organization small medium large no matter what the industry
15:54
but and the point that Morgan brought up which I love is you think about there’s millions of websites out there millions
16:00
of online Impressions many that we see as individuals and consumers every day you know with all those Impressions it’s
16:07
really hard to create that personalized interaction you know that many of us want to have as we deal with the
16:13
organizations that we engage with you know think about how many emails how many texts how many online Impressions
16:19
we see every day too many to sort through then you think about you know the five to seven male pieces we get
16:24
every day we may not pay attention to all of them but you get that impression right you get that quick impression as
16:30
you you know walk back from mailbox looking at those five pieces and you might pick out you know one two or five or all of them right to really take a
16:37
deeper look and I’ll take those odds any day right one out of five versus one out of you know five hundred thousand right
16:43
so um and it’s pointed out you know by Morgan as well you think about the return on investment you know still the
16:49
direct mail piece is by far the most powerful and effective communication tool an organization can use to really
16:55
personalize a message and deliver an impactful call to action right so the great CRM database direct mailers can
17:03
really personalize a male correspondence and leverage the website to really you
17:09
know fulfill the call to action um just the other day I received a a mail piece in the mail that piqued my
17:15
attention and within an hour when I got a free moment went to the website uh did my order was a company that just had a
17:22
really nice targeted message a great offer went to the website did my order you know within minutes I had my email
17:28
confirmation my text confirmation and then shortly thereafter you had all the information uh by email about you know
17:35
when the shipment should arrive right so think about the companies that do that very well and we all have similar
17:40
experiences like this but the companies that do that very very well the ones that we become very very loyal to right
17:47
you think about the power of mail you know in that customer value chain so it’s very very critical for us to have
17:53
true integrated communication plans that include direct mail and include websites
17:59
that support the activities and offers that we that we read about through mail thank you
18:05
thank you Kevin um my next question goes to Thomas what
18:11
other methods are available to help add value to a printed mail piece and a based on your experience
18:18
well uh there are several uh Lots where were already mentioned by Morgan and bye
18:25
bye Kevin but uh especially with Locker concentrates on is helping customers
18:30
with their direct mail to add valuable content as as a key factor to a male piece which
18:40
means personalization not only by address and uh starting an email
18:47
a mailpiece text with saying hi Cassandra or hi Kevin or whoever
18:53
receives such a mail piece but also specially uses or implements
19:00
the advertising companies locations so for they have storefront locations to
19:07
use the power of these locations to show that stores are right next door and
19:15
everybody can go to and uh feel see learn about the product about a
19:24
service this company offers so with personalized mapping you offer
19:30
eye-catching personalization elements to a male piece that shows routing how to
19:36
get somewhere or that shows location of stores service centers Service locations
19:42
around you customers recognizing that their
19:47
location is on there and what they see is their own familiar neighborhood on
19:53
this male piece map and we’re talking about Maps but basically this is this is
19:59
wrong we should better talk about uh information Graphics we put here and for
20:07
everybody a map is easy to understand that with some bits and pieces and a
20:14
small algorithms um everything can be assembled from the
20:20
customers starting from the customer’s address assigning a destination location
20:25
one or multiple locations and show this uh to the customer and lots of wonderful
20:33
uh projects we already produced for example like like uh this one for a car
20:41
dealership um with a routing map from the recipient’s address to the next car
20:47
dealer location we really made a lot of good uh
20:54
responses or we got a lot of good responses from our partners where we
21:00
really help them increasing the response rate of their mailing campaigns so for
21:09
example we had a mailing campaign in in the UK and they did an A B test saying hey we want to know what’s a classic
21:16
mailer we do come compared to a mailer that includes the power of location and
21:24
they found out that the part they send out with a Geo marketing information was
21:31
about 63 percent more effective in response than their classic mailer they
21:38
already did for years um so there’s a lot of ideas that can be
21:44
found with the help of Geo marketing and Geo information
21:49
um I think this is one of the most interesting and worth trying
21:58
um ideas and methods that are available for printed Direct Mail
22:07
thank you Thomas one of the biggest ways to add value is
22:13
through personalization as we’ve discussed however the old phrase junk in junk out comes to mind Adam do you want
22:19
to speak to the importance of address hygiene and maybe discuss ways in which providers can ensure that they’re utilizing the best data to drive these
22:26
high-value campaigns absolutely I’m going to key on something Thomas said it starts with the address
22:31
and address hygiene is important to maximize the ROI of a campaign you want
22:37
to get your message delivered at the lowest cost but the greatest offer in the world is no good if it doesn’t get
22:43
delivered so you have to use address hygiene to qualify for the lowest postage rates unfortunately
22:50
far to for far too many that is where the use of address hygiene ends and yet
22:56
really making use of address hygiene is vital to the success rate of direct mail campaigns
23:02
and print providers can really help to quickly scope the opportunity first just
23:07
to give you an idea the USPS reports that they do not deliver nearly five
23:13
percent of all marketing mail but that number is actually misleadingly low because if a mailer doesn’t request
23:21
that information on deliverable mail for direct mail the carrier is allowed
23:26
to Simply dispose of those pieces and the nearest garbage can and it doesn’t go back to USPS and doesn’t get
23:33
counted when the mailing industry really has taken a look at this to see what’s the true undelivable rate of direct mail
23:40
campaigns uh overall through the industry it’s eight to ten percent
23:45
if you were doing a marketing campaign to certain segments like a small or medium business that number is even
23:51
higher but there’s good news as well mailers have identified those that have
23:57
really maximized the use of their adverse hygiene process and use all of the available data their undeliverable
24:04
rate is below two percent so if more gets delivered more is able to be responded to and towards that goal I
24:12
mean there’s a lot that print providers can do but the very first thing is to support running these adverse hygiene
24:19
tools not just for their mailers but running it as close as possible until the time of mailing to make sure that
24:26
the very latest information is used uh interestingly the actual USPS
24:33
qualifications for discounts actually will allow literally months to have
24:38
passed between when the address hygiene run was done and the actual mailing but
24:43
to give you an example just for one issue that affects the deliverability of mail especially with Direct Mail
24:50
campaigns for every month that passes between when the address hygiene was run
24:56
and the actual mailing an additional one out of every 100 pieces will become
25:02
undeliverable as addressed and most likely end up in a trash can with nobody ever even see in the offer
25:12
thank you Adam in addition to what’s printed on a
25:18
direct mail piece there are many ways to reduce costs and add value on the mailers in the mailer itself David can
25:23
you discuss what weight what ways in which processes and Equipment are helping Print and Mail providers be more
25:28
productive with reduced staff thank you Cassandra absolutely there’s
25:34
no doubt there’s a labor shortage in American and severe in fact we expect to continue but there’s something that’s
25:40
often not discussed and that’s beyond the labor shortage the skills that the people have that are
25:46
willing to become part of our team are often less than desired and we need to find ways to utilize the people that we
25:53
are able to have on our team to get out the mail processing the the pressure processing
25:58
the mail every single day not to mention growing our business this is a significant challenge therefore we have to think differently
26:05
we have to try new Concepts which is what this panel is sharing as well as new approaches that’s where pressure
26:11
still has been very successful our growth here at infosil is primarily not
26:16
from traditional people who are using self mailers today rather it’s from people who are running inserters and
26:23
needed to try something different to get out mail and they found precious it was a very effective solution for them our
26:29
solution provides two different it requires two different components first it requires a form and then it
26:36
requires equipment and that’s where the efficiency comes together is by bringing those two components together
26:41
we run roll products and I’m just going to describe one example of many that are possible we
26:47
describe role products to provide role products to a mailer um it’s going to be blank white paper
26:53
they’re going to run it through their inkjet press the beauty of that first of all is it’s going to run at full speed
26:58
so there’s no slowdowns by buying pre-finished forms that already have glue and perfs on them with a timing mark
27:03
the products themselves are going to be completely blank which play well in the blank white paper environment it most of
27:11
our successful clients are pre-buying in advance uh specific
27:17
number of skus one two or three different skus that they’ll keep in inventory and they’ll use those same
27:22
skus for many different clients that will allow them to do quick inventories have very low amounts of inventory
27:29
because it’s a low amount of products they’re offering and virtually zero obsolescence because they use it for all
27:34
sorts of different packages that takes us to the equipment side most clients when they run our products
27:41
run their inkjet equipment roll to roll and then take it near line to the to finish the product that near line
27:48
typically consists of a roll-on line a rotary cutter a floor model folder and a
27:54
sealer or a presser followed by a conveyor and here’s where the beauty comes in that equipment is able to run 2
28:00
wide at speeds of 500 feet per minute which yields approximately 80 000 documents every single hour
28:09
they’re able to run from unwind imaged mail to mail trays in one operation that
28:15
eliminates not only on the envelope but here’s where the beauty is it also eliminates the human element of feeding
28:22
the envelopes both the outgoing and the reply envelopes into the inserter in one
28:27
role we’re able to process approximately sixty thousand mail pieces without stopping
28:33
therefore a small staff is able to process large quantities of mail very
28:39
efficiently to see some of that equipment you could go to our website info seal.com look under equipment for a
28:45
ps800 um but it’s not just our equipment there’s other Solutions out there as well and
28:52
the tree trick is processing this mail that is pre-made with glue and with
28:58
perforations through a two wide folder at 500 feet per minute it has a very small footprint
29:04
um and and is compatible with Direct Mail many people already own a floor model
29:09
folder and so by purchasing for Moss or from someone else they’re able to roll
29:15
up a sealer on the back end of that folder which provides a very cost effective solution for getting out this
29:22
meal at high speeds there’s a secondary Advantage by working with roles with the self mailers and that is it has very low
29:29
spoilage therefore because of that low spoilage rolls are able to be controlled
29:35
and the pieces are able to be kept in order this allows the mailer to pre-sort the mail down to the lowest postage
29:42
this is often a lower rate than co-mingling and can provide additional opportunities for the mailer to pick up
29:48
Margin and win work it takes us to another advantage to this type of product and that is the ease of
29:53
operation when you’re hiring these new people with those skills it needs to be easy and and running a folder and taking
30:01
off a conveyor are very simple tasks to train and so with relatively quick training for new employees it’s possible
30:07
to process mail at extremely high speeds and that is important when you’re unable to to find the necessary staff that
30:14
you’re looking to grow your business so I believe self mailers are a real solution to helping with staffing issues
30:20
in America it’s Cassandra thank you David
30:25
all right so we’ve discussed many of the opportunities for direct mail and the value of it but in reality postage rates
30:31
continue to go up which is which puts pressure on mailers to cut down on how often they mail the manner in which they
30:38
mail or move to Alternative channels so Thomas in your opinion how are mailers and printers working to add value to
30:45
what they do send so lots of mailers and and uh also the
30:51
companies uh they produce uh direct mail for are looking really more and more
30:57
into uh the customers data to uh create
31:02
efficient direct mail and also create sustainable uh campaigns which for
31:08
example means when you use a geofencing in in an email you reduce the number of
31:14
mail pieces of course which printers usually don’t like but results from from
31:20
Sprints uh show that the companies doing these Direct Mail campaigns that are uh
31:28
uh where suppression is added um
31:33
the recipients are more and more directed uh and more and more close to
31:39
the storefront locations in an email and all we can say is give the advice to to
31:46
these companies uh use more and more Geo information uh to help
31:52
to engage customers benefit and customer satisfaction
31:59
print mailings easily also can be combined with ideas like trust media
32:05
elements where you for example use a QR code linking to an online content linking to a store online store location
32:13
or providing other interesting experiences like AI or whatever and for
32:21
example a QR code can also be used to transport routing information just click
32:27
a QR code that has routing information and it will show the routing to a store
32:34
location on your phone so we have combined Both Worlds the printed world
32:40
and the digital world on the smartphone so print can start a lot of conversation
32:48
between the printed piece and the recipient and other media which is a
32:57
very very interesting and very very effective uh for all companies to make use of that
33:04
thank you Thomas I’m Morgan can you
33:11
can use showing attribution to ensure customers don’t seek other channels absolutely
33:18
um the first the first thing that I always like to suggest is to provide a match back report a lot of customers
33:25
have a challenging time actually tracking the response to their mail campaigns effectively so you know just
33:32
in a general way I like to ask for a list of all leads and converted business that came into the organization and
33:37
suppressed that against the mail file to actually show the true attribution to the mail now there are challenges with
33:45
that though you know sometimes customers aren’t willing to provide that data and additionally it is lacking and tracking
33:51
that initial response to the mail but there are technologies that can help with that like QR codes or call and text
33:58
tracking which we use and um also USPS provides the match back report to the
34:05
list for informed delivery where you can get the data of who received the informed delivery email opened it and
34:10
clicked on the inform delivery ad which is actually showing attribution to the digital Improv version of the mail piece
34:17
but the most important tool that that we have been using and and the printers who
34:22
partner with us uh is our lead match technology uh people respond to mail
34:28
like you’ve heard on this webinar today the way that they respond to any marketing channel including mail is by
34:33
going to the website now with digital marketing um you know there’s tracking codes
34:39
they’re called utms that allow marketers to actually track the response of digital marketing channels to the
34:45
website through their Google analytics but with mail when someone is you know standing in their living room and
34:51
they’re looking at a mail piece and they they go online to the website unless they convert buy something fill out a
34:56
form you know historically there hasn’t been a way to track that but with our lead match technology we have the
35:03
ability to do that we we first identify a website visitor we provide their address information we instantly
35:10
suppress that against the mail file so that we can show the number of responses to the website that in initial
35:16
conversion just like we can show for digital marketing to the website from the mail and who they are now this has
35:25
been imperative at keeping mail as a contender in the ring because without the use of Technology like this
35:31
typically it’s just not getting the credit that it truly deserves especially when marketers are utilizing multiple
35:38
marketing channels to drive traffic to their website so unless you’re truly isolating that to a pearl or a landing
35:44
page you know it can become very challenging to show that attribution to the male and um you know one campaign in particular
35:51
that’s a perfect example of this uh we had a campaign it was a smaller a smaller campaign but it was really
35:58
profound in improving this point because it was 5 000 pieces and in our dashboard
36:04
we saw that the client had 19 calls nothing truly earth-shattering about 19
36:10
calls or or that response but the lead match showed that
36:16
979 male recipients went to the website and responded and and that is a 19 a
36:23
little a little higher than 19 response rate to the male which is astronomical and without that data the client
36:32
probably wouldn’t have believed um in the efficacy of bail and potentially saw other channels to
36:37
continue with their marketing so and there’s other Technologies out there too you know I know there’s technologies
36:43
that integrate into crms they actually match back to leads that come into the crms but you know there’s a lot of
36:48
Technology out there that we can be utilizing to show that true attribution to the male we know that the mail works
36:55
and now we have the ability to leverage technology to prove it
37:02
oh thank you um when we wrote this article for the July issue we felt a lot of pushback
37:08
about postage not actually being the biggest challenge Kevin do you feel that posted rate increases are actually the
37:14
biggest challenge facing mailers today or are there other challenges like clean lists and accurate lists that come into
37:20
play here yeah thanks Cassandra great two-part question you know just the first one
37:26
um right up front you know I would say absolutely not you know when I say are the postal rate increases the biggest
37:31
challenge you know if you think about it the cost of the first class stamp has risen 17 cents in the last 10 years
37:38
right 17 cents in in 10 years somebody could debate that’s a 35 increase uh but
37:44
when you look at it it’s really a three percent per annual increase and most companies are you know passing along you
37:50
know two three four five percent increases you know in price and revenues to their customers so I would say it’s
37:56
it’s not the biggest challenge you know as we’ve talked about a little bit already in this session is you know very
38:03
you know High effective mail pieces can really you know drive high response rates and I really think there’s other
38:09
ways that you know mailers can find ways to uh you know optimize their returns and manage their costs uh well above and
38:16
beyond you know the the the postage rate increases we get annually from the USPS
38:22
um you know I think the the three biggest challenges facing mailers today one is really you know how to build and
38:27
maintain the proper CRM database which includes you know address hygiene and
38:32
address cleanups and and includes information about you know the types of behaviors and activities your clients
38:38
who can communicate them in the most effective way manner right that’s number one I would say how to use analytics and
38:44
tools to really create meaningful contact strategies number two is how do you take that data base and and data
38:51
analytics that you have to really create meaningful contact strategies hopefully leveraging both direct mail and web
38:57
technology as we commented on earlier and three is really you know looking at all of the printing and mailing
39:04
Technologies offered today to really deliver impactful mail pieces that yield the highest response rates at the most
39:11
optimal return rate on investment right so those are sort of the three things that I think should be Forefront of the
39:16
minds of uh all people who you know leverage Direct Mail the right way um you know I still chuckle I have a
39:22
National Organization to remain nameless who still refers to me as my two nicknames from high school uh resident
39:28
and current owner you know it still amazes me how many companies these really don’t look at their CRM
39:36
systems and and how a good serum system and having good contact and address information is critical to optimizing
39:43
and maximizing their return on investments in the mail so I really think it’s critical for for companies to
39:48
look inside their CRM systems and their strategies to leverage those and clean those up and really Drive
39:54
um you know good mail processes so again I think there are many mailing Technologies out there very affordable a
40:00
lot of the companies are bringing the Technologies down market so that smaller volume mailers can really take advantage
40:06
of a lot of these male creation and male finishing Technologies to really deliver impactful results for the organization
40:13
so I I do think there’s a lot more opportunities really on the you know on the opportunity side not on the cost
40:18
side that can really help companies uh optimize their mail processes and really drive a higher return on investment
40:27
thank you Kevin I’m next Adam print mail providers
40:33
providers to make future campaigns more successful good question it actually ties in with
40:39
some of the things Morgan has talked about um as well um and I’m going to say kind of
40:46
two two main things first off you know everybody’s focused on price uh so print
40:52
providers are doing everything they can to save the mailers cost by making sure the pieces qualify for full service and
40:58
get the discounts well because of that what I want to encourage and support is
41:04
to have all the print vendors really get their clients to activate and utilize the usps’s full-service ACS program
41:12
this is the program that will have the USPS actually provide feedback as to
41:19
what pieces ended up being undeliverable and why so right off the bat you can leverage
41:25
that data to go back to all right I did this Direct Mail campaign and I pulled
41:32
lists from five different vendors and from those five vendors list sources I
41:39
have you know like three categories underneath each one and I can look and see go who’s giving me good quality
41:45
names and addresses which ones are giving me the highest deliverability rates right off the bat
41:51
that should tell me who I’m getting the most responses from if you can actually tie in response rates as well then you
41:58
can really make smarter decisions uh about what’s what’s really going on the second part is then working to
42:06
understand that there are a lot of address characteristics that the USPS
42:11
makes available and you can use that to determine how is this actually impacting mail delivery
42:18
Melody and ultimately impacting response rates for a particular campaign
42:24
so you can kind of decide you know I did this with a client recently they have
42:30
sources coming from six main locations they divided it into 30 subgroups and we
42:37
were looking initially at how much was not getting delivered and they were able to give me response
42:42
rate data as well and so we were able to tie that in and really identify okay here are characteristics that has low
42:50
deliverability and you know loaded no response rates these are ones we want to
42:55
uh these are records we want to stop sending this is the characteristics we want to kind of eliminate but the
43:01
positive on the same side opposite side of that we identified some characteristics that not only had you
43:09
know good quality deliverability rates but had well above average response rates
43:14
so now they’re able to go wait a minute these are the type of Records we want more of
43:20
so in the future when I’m requesting records or I’m deciding which records to include in the campaign
43:27
these are the ones that I want to utilize first you know I can make these smarter decisions because I can tell you for a
43:34
fact there are literally millions of addresses out there that qualify for postage discounts
43:40
and yet based on their characteristics 25 35 and in some cases even over 40
43:47
percent end up being undeliverable those are just wasted mail pieces and I said Sometimes the best action is
43:55
not simply to suppress or replace those records Sometimes the best answer for a mailer
44:01
is to modify the record or specifically what goes on the mail piece to
44:06
facilitate deliverability of that piece and ultimately generate you know the
44:12
best results coming out of that campaign so great great question thank you very much thank you Adam
44:19
um and David can you talk about value-added features that help direct mailers generate attention um maybe things like a fixed integrated
44:26
cards and Specialty die Cuts do you see clients taking advantage of these solutions to improve Roi
44:32
foreign Cassandra as the team has already commented response rates are King in the world of
44:40
direct mail and I believe many of the things that you’ve heard make a difference in the response rates but the
44:46
product itself also makes a difference in the response rate that’s going to be made consumers
44:53
regularly recognize pressure seal as a item they must open they they
45:00
associate with a check or a bill and the instant Advantage for the marketing person or for the mailer themselves is
45:07
that the piece gets opened um and that’s a significant event that happens once that piece gets opened we
45:13
hear from our clients regularly um that that pressure seal has outperformed other packages they’ve
45:21
compared against and self mailers um occasionally a mailer will leave a
45:26
self-mailer product but when they come back and they invariably do we hear again you know it might have given me a
45:32
response time that increased for a short period of time but the the self mailer consistently outperformed what we were
45:38
doing so let me show a few examples of what some of those value-added features
45:44
we find in the marketplace that are working right now and are very effective probably the hottest product that we
45:50
make today um that is highly sought after is a 14 inch product
45:56
um that it has con a polyester window in it a die cut with a polyester window
46:02
we produce this in roles too wide that go through inkjet machines we also
46:08
produce this one wide for laser and other inkjet equipment but this is a two wide product that’s compatible with
46:15
continuous fed inkjet and one of the beauties of it is that when it goes out in the mail stream and the recipient
46:21
gets it they they see it what appears to be a check inside it’s a faux check but and it immediately grabs their attention
46:28
and they get it open upon getting it open they see the message now the message all the other all the other
46:33
items that we heard um are very important but this product has been performing very very well for
46:41
a long time but it it really has accelerated in the past two years
46:46
um we’re seeing lots of activity in the world of polyester windows and faux
46:51
checks another product that has uh consistently been sought after is one
46:57
with the specialty die cut so on the back side of this piece we have a
47:03
special die cut that’s been applied these have also been tested by the oems for continuous and cheap head inkjet as
47:09
well as laser and they are compatible um but it’s a nice interactive piece and the clients the people who get this
47:16
mail enjoy opening it it’s interactive and they get to do something with it upon them opening it and that includes
47:23
responding to something um just a just a nice informative piece that has made a difference
47:30
um one of the challenges we often hear about pressure seal or self mailers is
47:36
there’s just not enough real estate there’s not enough space to do all your mailing so we have come out with a
47:42
product uh that is and I have school way back to show it is 24 inches long and
47:48
it’s eight and a half inches wide again we’re selling this traditionally uh in roles for continuous inkjet
47:55
um and when it’s male um it’s a six inch deep and you can change the width this one happened to be
48:01
eight and a half but you can make it a big presence in the mailbox and upon opening it
48:06
um you get two two individual eight and a half by eleven sheets of paper all nested
48:13
together out of one self mailer that has not required a
48:18
outgoing envelope or a return envelope and you can also do this with a return envelope um and this product has had a great deal
48:25
of success um in it within the last year we have seen many different people pursuing this
48:31
type of product because a large amount of real estate it’s high efficiency in getting in the mail
48:37
um in the world of inkjet it’s it’s sometimes challenging now to get an
48:43
integrated card where the ink is sticking so there are solutions out there today this happens to be one
48:49
um it’s a product that has the die cuts and the glue already on it and it’s going to be applying two different Plies
48:55
of of paper together and upon doing that when you remove it you end up with a 14
49:01
or 15 we can even make a thicker Point ID card um for the user and that’s also
49:07
important and we’ve regularly seen Direct Mail campaigns that have included ID cards this is a product that works
49:13
very well it has a nice presence it’s um and people have sought after that product as well
49:20
um another product that we developed for the self-made or perspective and this
49:26
one was also roles but it could be done in sheets as well we started out with a a again a very
49:32
large piece um and it was blank and the inkjet world
49:38
is going to put on all the variable data but when it goes into the mailbox it’s a very large piece so it has a very very
49:45
big presence this one happened to be I believe it was ten and a half by six um so it had a large presence in the
49:51
mailbox but upon opening it um what you ended up with was a eight
49:57
page booklet all done off one sheet of paper off the
50:02
rotary continuous fed Inkjet or sheet fed inkjet so there are lots of different type of value added Solutions
50:09
which are very efficient and effective in getting the message out to the clients
50:15
um but but we have found and heard regularly that self mailers just get open because of the appearance
50:22
and what they are in the mail stream um we could go on for hours with different constructions but that’s
50:27
really good beyond the scope of this presentation it’s really a question in
50:32
my mind of what are we going to do different um that’s going to make a difference to our success as mailers and to our
50:39
customer success and in fact impact the bottom line
50:45
we often hear when we go to these kind of conversations with mailers but I already own an inserter why would I want
50:51
to do a self mailer and that’s good they should own you all should own an inserter not everything is compatible
50:57
with a self mailer but if it can be mailed effectively as a
51:03
self mailer with all the efficiency gains the lower costs and the opening rates and the higher response rates the
51:10
question is why wouldn’t you try for the right applications self mailers are
51:16
really a great opportunity for the mailing industry and they really have drawn in higher response rates than the
51:22
the standard industry of a number 10 window envelope so I believe these products makes a real difference in
51:29
response rates Cassandra thank you David um so that was the end of my questions
51:35
I’m going to bring everybody back up to the stream um and we had some registered questions
51:40
coming in and I’m just gonna flip leave it open to anyone to kind of jump on
51:46
um the first one is from a registered hearing that Nationwide new mover data is down 5.9 percent year over year
51:53
um they want to know are we experienced this as well and how can we overcome this
51:59
anybody want to take it okay I have seen um new mover data has
52:07
decreased um I don’t know about 5.9 year over year
52:13
uh some of it obviously has been impacted by you know the cost of houses
52:19
uh and definitely was affected by the pandemic things were really out of whack
52:25
for a while where you know being a dynamic nobody moved suddenly there was
52:31
a you know six months at one year you saw a ton of business moves come through uh then shortly after it’s like a bunch
52:38
of individuals and they kind of came back for a while uh but yeah in the last especially like the last three to six
52:45
months and compared to same period last year overall move volume does seem to be
52:50
down uh so I think a lot of that is based on the housing market okay
52:59
a reticent question let’s see they said they want to help unders can you help us
53:05
understand the percentage cost breakdown of the cost for printing paper and postage they sent they’re spending a lot
53:12
of money on paper and they want to know if the paper costs go down
53:18
will that influence brand owners to print more
53:23
anybody have anything to say about that I’m trying to translate these questions but
53:29
it Cassandra it’s really a total package she she is correct at that
53:35
um and and paper certainly is an influencing Factor but as we already heard postage is
53:42
a bigger portion of it than paper and postage is not the primary concern the
53:48
real issue needs to be focused on response rates and as we we
53:53
heard many of the the products that we’ve already discussed really increase response rates
53:58
um from from the list management all the way down to the product itself that’s
54:03
printed on all of those have an impact and it’s not paper that is making the decision as much as response rates as
54:09
it’s measured properly yeah let’s go ahead with uh with with the
54:17
increasing the response rates and there’s a lot more focus on the undeliverable mail because there’s no
54:23
value and that’s just complete waste if you actually look at the cost and impact
54:28
uh to the mailing industry of the undeliverable mail it’s like even if you
54:34
if you could eliminate half of what of the current marketing mail that’s on deliverable for a mailer that would
54:40
cover the increased postage rates for the next two three years right yeah out of Adam Adam I I totally
54:48
agree to that uh I uh talked about uh address suppression and uh this this
54:55
also goes into your uh Direction Adam um we do uh projects where we do
55:02
suppressing uh uh lots of addresses for a customer and when we combine just only
55:09
the savings for a postage what we charge for project is less than we save this
55:17
customer in postage um so there are a lot of possibilities
55:22
with new technologies with new ideas to help all these these things move and uh
55:29
even with higher paper pricing um you’re in a very good way if you do
55:35
direct mail to your customers and I would add to that I mean there’s
55:40
also new in addition to new technology the USPS is making new data available
55:45
you’re going to have more information about again address characteristics that you didn’t have before
55:51
and so it can allow members to make even smarter decisions about whether to mail what the mail and even how to mail to
55:59
particular addresses okay
56:04
okay um yeah the other questions were just asking about some of the new trends and
56:10
technologies that we’ve kind of talked about that this whole time so um so I’ll wrap it up from here um I
56:16
want to thank everyone for participating today and for more on the topic we have a July August issue of DPS magazine
56:21
um that will be posted pretty soon with a lot more information
56:30
thank you
